'Scandal' Recap: Run

The return of Shonda Thursdays pulled no punches and left fans with their hearts racing.

With a cold start that had Olivia running down a long hallway with her sweated-out hair flying behind her and a gun in her hand, we knew it would be an action-packed episode. What was up with the red door? Why was Frolivia so panicked? We then jumped right back to the dramatic replay of what went down during the the mid-season finale when Olivia was snatched from her own home while Jake sauntered back to her with pillows and a blanket, ready for a romp on the piano. Then we saw Jake, in his skivvies, running out the door in search of Olivia, not knowing that the kidnappers had her right across the hall in her neighbor's apartment. While Jake ran outside, looking cute as all get out, the kidnappers went back into Olivia's apartment and removed all of the surveillance cameras before he returned and then waited for him to leave for good. Escalating the horror, the gang killed the sweet elderly neighbor and then forced a bound and gagged Olivial to lay under the dead body in a body bag as they faked being an ambulance crew to escape. And with that all of Twitter took a collective shudder.

And they put Olivia in a body bag with the dead lady on her. I AM TRAUMATIZED FOR OLIVIA! #Scandal

In the ambulance a very shaken Liv showed a glimmer of herself when one of the captors tried to intimidate her and she broke it down for him why she knew he wasn't the man in charge, so no, she would not be pleading for her life with him today, thank you very much. But then they drugged her and she fell out. Liv woke up in a cell with an overly chatty, not nearly ratty enough cellmate named Ian, of whom viewers were immediately suspicious. There were sounds coming from outside their window that made it seem as if they were in a Middle Eastern country. Ian talked of being held for ransom by cruel, capricious captors. At first skeptical, Liv soon went into white hat mode and promised Ian that she would save him because she was Olivia Pope and, you know, the president of the United States would be searching all over the place for her. It was that sort of crazy laugh mixed with her need to regain control of the situation. You almost couldn't blame her for running off at the mouth. Almost.

While two of the guys who watched her continued to be intimidating, they took her on frequent five-minute bathroom breaks to a one nasty, nasty bathrook, during which she plotted her escape. And opportunity came in the form of one amazing bra underwire that she pulled out and used to unlock and start to open the bathroom window. But she was caught and in retaliation the guards took Ian out of the cell and seemed to shoot him.

After they took Ian away, Olivia really began to crack. First she dreamed that Jake burst in with the military to rescue her and then next she was in that Vermont house with Fitz, loving life and making jam. Lots and lots of jam. But her head wouldn't let her get caught up in dreamland and soon she had Abby showing up, in stilettos out on a dirt road, reading her about why this was all a dream and she had to pull it together to save herself.

"There is no man to rescue you. You are the only gladiator. You have to rescue yourself!" Dream Abby with the facts. #Scandal

She woke up, ready to try again. It seemed she was thwarted as they'd bricked up the bathroom window but as she sat on the bathroom floor (did I mention it was nasty?), she saw something that dream Abby had pointed out to her--a gasket. More importantly though was the pipe she could loosen with that and use as a weapon. She incapacitated one guard, grabbed his gun and his keys, and took off down that long hallway, only to run into the other guard right near the end. He stood there, taunting her that she would never pull the trigger on him because that was a man's tool and she didn't have the stomach for him. Right about then I might have been yelling at the TV for her to shoot him. And she did. Square in the forehead. For a moment I thought this was all a dream because it was such a perfect kill shot but it was real. She was then unlocking the the seventy million locks on the red door until it was open and she burst out onto... a soundstage. Then her buddy Ian strides over, cleaned up and wearing a holster, and he tells her how he's played her to get the information about how the president wouldn't stop until he found her.

And with that, Olivia, queen of the information currency system, who is still holding a gun mind you, is seemingly broken and follows Ian back toward the cell.

That was a lovely adreniline-fueled return to #TGIT. But next week I'm hoping we get to see Huck in rescue mode. Also, only in Shondaland would all those jokes about Olivia being Helen of Troy lead us to a scenario where a sitting president is faced with the possibility of going to war over his girlfriend. Gotta love it. What did you guys think of tonight's episode?